La-Z-Boy has always believed that comfort and craftsmanship go hand in hand. That same spirit guided the company as it reimagined how to support and empower its people. Nearly a century after creating its first recliner, La-Z-Boy continues to evolve—this time by transforming how its teams connect, grow, and lead. La-Z-Boy is an iconic symbol of American comfort, but its growth into a global, multi-brand company created significant complexity. As a company of brands with multiple arms, including manufacturing, retail, distribution, and corporate, its people and data were deeply siloed. This fragmentation was a major challenge for strategic talent management.
Prior to Workday, we would have paper forms, so each of our facilities would have everything filed away in cabinets.
Director of Global Talent, Culture, and Belonging
“I’ve had to experience digging through files before at our office. It’s not fun,” says Jessie Heath, director of global talent, culture, and belonging. The company’s previous HR system was just a data-catcher, lacking the tools to develop its workforce. Career paths were often trapped within a single business unit. “Historically, if you were in manufacturing, that’s where you stayed and where you expected your growth opportunities to be,” Heath says. “We want our employees to have more options.”
A modern foundation for a legacy brand.
La-Z-Boy needed to break down these barriers and unite its talent on one platform. The company chose Workday Human Capital Management as its new foundation, engaging its long-time partner, Korn Ferry, to help integrate and structure the system. "Korn Ferry's been an amazing partner for us for over a decade," Heath notes, highlighting their role in building the company's job architecture, which became a critical component of the Workday deployment. With research-backed talent frameworks in place, Korn Ferry has helped La-Z-Boy bring consistency to how work is defined and organized, aligning recruiting, performance, and mobility in a way that Workday can extend across every part of the organization.
The transformation from paper to platform was immediate. "Workday provides a consolidated, real-time view of the entire organization,” says Heath. "No matter where I am, I have visibility into our plants around the country. I can check in on our Dayton plant and see where they are with their talent review. That helps us create a better hiring strategy."
Opening new paths for the people who build comfort.
With a unified HCM foundation, La-Z-Boy’s next goal was to empower employees to own their careers. The company activated Workday Skills Cloud and Career Hub to create new pathways for growth across the business.
"One powers the other," Heath says. These tools are dismantling the old, rigid silos. "Now I see people from retail reaching out to someone at corporate. Before now, those connections would have never existed."
Our employees get to direct their own career journeys. About 50% of our corporate population have logged into Career Hub to explore their future at the company.
Director of Global Talent, Culture, and Belonging
A smarter way to stay human.
La-Z-Boy has embraced Workday Illuminate™ not as a replacement for human connection, but as an enabler for it. "For me, AI is a companion in that process," Heath explains.
This philosophy is captured in the company’s use of Workday Peakon Employee Voice. After completing their first global engagement survey on the platform, leaders were amazed by the speed and depth of the insights. The AI-powered summary feature proved invaluable, surfacing a nuanced insight that leaders would have otherwise missed.
"We scored low in an area," Heath recalls. "When I pulled the AI summary of the comments, we discovered that the user wasn’t actually talking about themselves. They were concerned about somebody else." This insight allowed leaders to address the right issues. "That ability to respond quickly improves morale, because our people know we hear them."
Settle in and stay a while.
Looking ahead, La-Z-Boy plans to build on its Workday foundation to increase its focus on people and growth. “Our partnership with Workday and Korn Ferry helped us create a more connected, intuitive experience for every employee,” says Heath. “It’s about helping people see a future here where they can keep learning, advancing, and feel part of something bigger.”